To understand the rise of an anti-rights movement targeting the rights of women and LGBT+ people in the UK, it is important to situate it within the broader context of a general deterioration in human rights protections. Successive governments have introduced legislation that severely restricts the rights to protest and freedom of assembly and have passed increasingly restrictive immigration and asylum laws that raise concerns about the UK's compliance with its international legal obligations.
In addition, in the context of Brexit and the political and media narrative of ‘taking back control’, there have been repeated attempts to replace the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights, alongside ongoing calls from some politicians for the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights.
Since 2010, repeated cuts to social security and chronic underinvestment in public services have undermined economic and social rights. Changes to tax and social security policies have disproportionately affected women, particularly racialised women and single mothers.
The UK has also experienced a significant decline in protections for LGBT+ rights, falling from 1st to 22nd place in ILGA-Europe’s annual Rainbow Map between 2015 and 2026. Key factors contributing to this decline include the failure to reform the legal gender recognition framework, the absence of a ban on conversion practices, the treatment of LGBT+ asylum seekers, and the implications of the Supreme Court judgment in For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Minister.
In July 2025, Amnesty International UK released a study of 65 anti-rights groups in the UK, 32 of which spent £106 million from 2019 to 2023, a rise of more than a third. These actors were divided into categories based on their primary interest or characteristic; however, the distinctions between categories are often blurred. For example, the Christian Institute is classified as an ultra-conservative Christian policy and advocacy organisation, but its work encompasses abortion, trans rights, education and other issues.
These organisations form part of a wider anti-rights ecosystem—a network of groups that work on different issues but share similar goals and often support each other's efforts to roll back human rights protections.
The 2025 study showed that the biggest spenders are UK branches of US groups, including Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF UK), which played a pivotal role in overturning Roe v Wade in the US and continues to challenge the rights of women and LGBT+ people worldwide. Investigative reporters have shown how ADF's influence in the UK is growing and highlighted its close ties to the Trump administration.
This briefing is an update of the findings published in July 2025 and includes gender-critical organisations, which were examined in detail in a separate briefing published in May 2026. This is a fast-moving environment, therefore the report provides a snapshot of the UK anti-rights ecosystem at the end of June 2026. The financial information available is expected to be an underestimate and likely represents only a fraction of the resources available to anti-rights actors in the UK.

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